As we all take a break from raining blows down on fellow holiday shoppers, let us take time to celebrate Festivus; one of the holiest days of the year. Gather around your aluminum pole (NO TINSEL) and let’s get the holiday started.

Another year of announcing is coming to a head, and I GOT A LOT OF PROBLEMS WITH YOU PEOPLE. Let’s get to it and start with the ceremonial Airing of Grievances.

-FOX SPORTS! Robots, still! Robots on your NFL coverage have been annoying me well over a decade now. A robot doing the macarena wasn’t funny 10 years ago and still is not amusing today.

-DOUG GOTTLIEB! College basketball fans thought the years of carmudgeonly announcing were over when CBS axed the grumpiest of old men, Billy Packer, from covering NCAA basketball. We were wrong. ESPN now brings us the younger, smugger Billy Packer v2.0 in Doug. This is a man who was booted from ND for stealing credit cards and now today has a holier-than-thou attitude that makes me want to take him on in the feats of strength. Probably one of the best games of the year in NCAA basketball was the Missouri/Georgetown OT game played earlier this year that Georgetown won in OT 111-102 that featured great offense and a buzzer beater. Gottlieb provided color commentary for this game, and he did his damndest to ruin what was a fantastically exciting game.

-INTERVIEWS WITH COACHES DURING GAMES! Never has anything slightly insightful or interesting been said by a coach during a game, ever. Instead, we get bland questions and bland answers from coaches who could not look more annoyed if they tried to. These interviews usually take place between quarters or between innings and they play the interview during live action. While they play the interview, usually they go with a split screen and show the lifeless coach in the giant box and the live game with no commentary in the small box. This is petty, but damn it, I’m in the holiday spirit.

-MATT MILLEN! I’m from Detroit, so my hate for him burns like a thousand suns. Why is he everywhere? WHY?. Why is he covering the Michigan State/Michigan football game? To me, this is akin to Art Modell being paraded around Cleveland. Throw him in a pit of fire, please.

-BIG TEN NETWORK STREAMING! You have a network with 5 or so overflow channels…why do you charge me $5 to stream men’s basketball games? Do you realize how much Rotel I’ve eaten because of you? Now, you need $5 so I can watch the Michigan State vs. Adam College Adams game, and then I’d have to fork over another fiver to watch Purdue take on the Harrison University Cougars? Plus, when you do dupe me into paying you give us student announcers and students working the cameras! This is a neat idea, but the idea of paying money to watch a students homework project is tough to accept.

DICK VITALE! We get it, you like Duke, a lot. But there is absolutely no reason at all you need to constantly talk about Duke when Duke is not the game you are watching. Sure, Austin Rivers might be a neat recruit, but I don’t need to hear about him when watching a game between a PAC-10/12 and a Big 12/10 school.

SPORTSCENTER! You are live for 6 hours every morning. Is it really too much to ask that you show the highlights of all the games that took place last night? Damn it, sometimes I want to know what happened in the Raptors/T’Wolves game last night. Would it also be too hard for you to sneak in some hockey now and then? I mean, we are killing 6 hours here. Also, “breaking news” stops being considered “breaking news” hours after after the story came out.

Whew, I feel better already. The feats of strength are a difficult thing to celebrate via the internet, and also, no one wants an aroused Rex Ryan logging on to Awful Announcing. So, it’s on you to go find your old man, and pin him to complete the Festivus festivities.